


Love will tear us apart

by caixa



Series: Real Love [4]
Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: 30 Day Angst Challenge, Angst, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Family Drama, Hate Sex, Infidelity, M/M, Pregnancy, Real Madrid CF, Sex Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-14 07:50:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 3,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16488593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caixa/pseuds/caixa
Summary: Falling into a bad habit again hurts. A series of scenes set in season 2017-2018 of Real Madrid.--Title changed November 12th, 2018 from "thirty angsty drabbles".





	1. Mysterious Bruises

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic for the 30 day football rpf challenge of November 2018 but it became complete in less than 30 chapters. I wrote my daily bits in a quick-and-dirty manner, first ideas from my brain to the keyboard, little planning ahead, letting the story take me where it wanted to go.
> 
> I have changed the fic title from "thirty angsty drabbles" to what it is now for two reasons. First: I learned that a drabble is supposed to be exactly 100 words, here the chapter length varies. Second: I cut the challenge short due to a rough situation in my personal life. I had enough angst there.
> 
> The fic has footballers' family members as characters, Emma's real-life pregnancy included. Read the tags and take heed that the emphasis is on angst, emotional hurt and negative effects of an extra-marital affair: jealousy, guilt, rivalry, pain.
> 
> This is a sequel to 3 older fics that you can find clicking the series tag above. Those were set in the La Liga season 2016-17 and in them Gareth and Cristiano had a brief affair which they ended. This is set in season 2017-18 and it seems that they have started again.
> 
> Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division is a great inspiration song here, as is The Funeral of Hearts by HIM.
> 
> ■

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the routine bites hard  
> And ambitions are low  
> And the resentment rides high  
> But emotions wont grow  
> And were changing our ways,  
> Taking different roads  
> Then love, love will tear us apart again
> 
> (Love Will Tear Us Apart / Joy Division, Bernard Sumner, Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Stephen Paul David Morris 1980)

 

"Oh, honey! What’s that?” Emma rolls over to her stomach on the bed and pokes Gareth’s lower back, straight at his tailbone, and he flinches. He looks over his shoulder at his bare ass: it’s definitely a bruise Emma is poking, vaguely round, a deep smoky shade of purple.

“Was it from the fall?” she continues, giving Gareth a blessed save.

“Yes, must be that. Didn’t notice the hit when it happened.”

Football, what a glorious alibi.

He pushes himself up by the edge of the bed. He’s naked from a good night of almost-marital sex (a father-in-law being in and out of jail is such a nuisance when you’re trying to plan a wedding) and is going to hit the shower.

“Poor you,” Emma says, “Those too.”

Gareth is already up and halts in the middle of taking a step to look at Emma again. Emma’s squinted eyes are focused on his inner thighs, and he glances down to catch where she’s looking although he already knows.

Round dots, those can be from an unfortunate contact with a cleat. They don’t have to be marks from steely strong fingers gripping him, spreading his thighs apart so hard it hurt, hurt _good_.

He fears that a blush is creeping on his face, turns to hide it and hurries to the shower, not stopping to check if there is a hint of suspicion in his fiancee's brown eyes.

 

 


	2. Argument

”You gave me markings,” Gareth says, frowning, stepping into the privacy of the shower room where Cristiano is already drying himself.

“Just because you like it, baby boy,” Cristiano replies, takes the wet towel he’s been using to dry his curls, twists it into a rope and flicks it sharply at Gareth’s buttocks.

Gareth fucking hates it when Cris goes into this juvenile alpha-male jock crap.

“Seriously,” he says, choosing a shower stall, “Emma noticed it. This is why we stopped doing it in the first place. We didn’t want to hurt anybody. I know I didn’t.”

Cristiano huffs, neck suddenly stiff, glares at him, upper lip arching into a condescending curve.

“Get off your high horse, Gaz. You came fucking begging. I have a family just as much as you.” He drops the towel into the hamper by the door and casts one last look at Gareth, looking him up and down, eyes still hard, relentless. “Do you really think I don’t see through you? You’re scared of getting caught only because you want to protect your own sorry ass.”

“Hey –“ Gareth protests but the door is swinging on his hinges, Cristiano outside in the dressing room, and no way will he run after him now, soaking and naked. Anger fumes under his skin, mixed with a sense of shame; why the fuck has he given Cristiano the chance to have the upper hand like that, act so superior like he is any better.

Gareth could take his time to let the streaming water wind him down but he doesn’t want to. Maybe it’s the guilt, the guilt from cheating, the guilt from the lapse of self-control, maybe it’s vanity, but he can’t let go of his mood, he hangs to his anger like it’s the fuel that keeps him going.

He showers quickly, heads to the dressing room barely wrapping a towel around his hips, water dripping from his thinning hair.

Cristiano is dressed, he looks ready to leave, but because he is Cris, he stands by the mirror preening his hair.

“Fuck you, Cris. You’re no different,” Gareth leans in to hiss at him.

Cristiano glances at Gareth, drops his eyes to the sleeve of his leather jacket. There’s a drop of water from Gareth’s hair; Cris sweeps it off with a fingertip and turns back to the mirror.

“Huh,” he barely acknowledges Gareth’s words with a short huff.

“You’re just as shit-scared of things blowing off on your precious face, Cris. Don’t pretend this is about caring on your side. You have as much to lose as I have.”

Cristiano lowers his fingers from his hair, squints at his face in the mirror, gives it a small, approving nod. He picks up his Vuitton bag from the bench, takes a step towards the door but turns to look at Gareth.

“As much, huh?” he shakes his head, that same, stone cold condescending curve on his upper lip. “More. I always have more.”

 


	3. Betrayal

Emma ignores incoming calls from numbers she doesn't recognise. It's a rule: if they are anyone she'll want to talk with, they'll know to contact her through her mother or sister or Gareth's cousin. If there are disturbingly many calls from the same number, she'll change hers.

It's routine if you're married to a world famous footballer, or related to a bunch of Welsh drug-dealing bozos.

So, three calls in two days from a Spanish number not on her contact list? Not alarming, ignore.

 

Then comes a text message.

_This is Dolores Aveiro. I have to talk to you. This is not a joke. Please call me._

 

Emma scrunches her face, thinking, and types

_Why_?

 

Whoever is texting her doesn't have the patience to type anymore because her phone blinks with a call. Fuck it, she decides, and answers.

"Yes?"

" _Emma Rhys-Jones?_ "

It is Dolores or a good imitator. Emma has overheard her talking on the pitch after wins, she has heard her interviews.

"Yes. I'm surprised."

There is a sigh on the phone.

" _I call because of junior. I would not if not for him,_ " Dolores says in slow, labored, heavily accented English. " _Can you please talk to your husband?"_ she changes to Spanish, Emma hears her trying to keep it slow and simple.

"About what?"

" _They're fucking again. Cris is all the time with the babies, and now goes out to see him, Gareth, Junior misses him and it hurts me to see it. Think of him, as a mother. Please talk with Gareth they should keep it down. It was not bad before."_

Fu- What? Is this a sick joke?

"What are you talking about?" Emma hates that her voice is cracking, she feels she sounds panicked.

_"I know it is him. I saw their text conversation on Cristiano's phone. He is out now. That is why I'm calling. He had told Junior he will fetch him from school today but he cancelled to me at the last moment and asked me to do it for him. I have to go there and see him disappointed when it's me and not papa."_

Who does that? Spies on her son's phone and talks about things like that like they are everyday business, just to be sorted out? 

_Before._

Like some everyday business Emma knows about, has known all along?

_"Is your husband at home?"_

Emma doesn't answer. Gareth isn't. He said he had massage after morning practice. It's not the usual day but what does Emma know about his body maintenance.

Emma doesn't answer, and Dolores goes on.  _"Talk with him. He is not bad, he will understand. For the boy. They can fuck on game trips. But not at home. Please. I have to go now. School ends soon."_

Thanks to the plus rug on the floor, Emma's phone drops down with a soft thud.

 

 

 

 


	4. Hate Sex

  

The phone starts beeping at Emma’s feet and she realizes it’s time. The talk with Dolores has lasted less than five minutes but it feels like she has set the alarm a lifetime ago.

She picks up the phone and taps it silent, it takes a few tries because her hand is still shaking, and heads to the bathroom to pick up the white plastic stick from the countertop.

Two lines.

There would be those fancy digital pregnancy tests, showing little smiley faces or a number indicating how many weeks you are into it, but Emma is superstitious about this, she has wanted the same kind that showed her Alba and Nava, those were good news and she wanted to keep getting the same kind of good news.

In another lifetime.

 

Alba is at school and Nava is napping. Emma escapes her lack of energy to the Internet, scrolling the pregnancy calculator pages and cute infographics she got acquainted with the last time, but it feels numb, hollow, unreal.

_Fucking Cristiano Ronaldo. Fucking literally fucking._

She clicks a colourful ad on the side of the screen, one she wouldn’t even notice in her usual state of mind. She navigates randomly through the webshop: dildos, gags, whips, lubricants. Cockrings, restraints, an array of vibrating toys.

_I’ll fucking cuff you to the table, fucking cheating trash. Gag your cocksucking mouth._

She clicks items to the shopping cart, recklessly, almost blindly, picturing herself using every one of them. That grotesquely veiny, almost repulsively big latex cock, hopefully fear in Gareth’s eyes when she presents it before his eyes, asking _is this how he fucks you_ as she pushes it in.

Or tie him to the bed, arms and legs in an eagle spread, fingering his ass up to his prostate. Coaxing in the violently large butt plug, riding him until he’s about to come, stopping and pulling out, commanding him to hold it. Drawing her finger on the surface of the shaft, slippery from her own juices, so light it teases but not nearly enough stimulation to help him to the climax. _It’s not your turn to come this time, whore._

 

She empties the shopping cart before it’s time to go and see if Nava has woken up.

 

 


	5. Break-up

 

”Do you have something to tell me?”

Gareth lifts his eyes from his morning coffee, distracted, and looks at Emma across the table. She is stirring hers in rigid motions, little circles creating a vortex in the middle of the cup.

“No – no, why?”

Emma huffs shortly, lets go of the spoon, pushes the cup away by straightening her fingers and leans back on her seat, crossing her arms over her chest.

Her eyes are dead serious. She’s been acting stiff and aloof for days, when Gareth notices it he blames the stress from – well, everything, but most of the time he has simply overlooked it.

He can’t overlook it now, not under her scorching glare. He takes a long, cautious sip from his mug, gazing over the edge, ready to put it down.

“I know you and Cristiano are fucking. It has to stop.”

He’s halfway swallowing a mouthful of coffee but inhales too sharply, hot liquid soaring down his throat, making him cough and spew it out, brown drops spraying on his shirt and all over the white tabletop.

“You said you have nothing to tell me? Nothing? That’s what you call nothing?” she shoots, hissing her words out like venom, like darts. She leans forward, eyebrow raising into a question. “Fucking nerve.”

Gareth knows there’s no game for him to play here. He gnaws his lower lip, it tastes of coffee. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice trembling.

“You’re bloody right. Sorry lying bastard.”  She crosses her arms tighter, Gareth notices the manicured fingers clutching the cloth of her bathrobe to keep from trembling.

“Listen,” she says, as if Gareth had a choice. “Whatever it is, it stops here. You don’t see him, or any other of your teammates, privately. You don’t talk to him outside football, nothing beyond whatever is absolutely necessary. No exceptions. Understood?”

Gareth doesn’t know what the unintelligible mumbling sound that crosses his barely moving lips is but Emma seems to take it as acknowledgement.

“Good,” she says. “You don’t deserve this family and you know it. But girls don’t deserve to lose their family, whatever crap-pile of a father they have in their lives. They don’t deserve to lose the life they have. We don’t. We’re going to be a family of five, and however shitty it may be, we need to be a family.”

She stands up as Gareth processes her words. _Five._

“Five?”

Emma looks at him over her shoulder. “Yes, five. I made the test four days ago, when you were – well, you know.” She flicks her long hair and throws the last glance before she leaves, at Gareth, then at the spilled coffee on the tabletop. “Clean up when you’re finished.”

 


	6. Losing in a Final Match

Gareth isn't sure why they started again. It certainly wasn't because the timing was convenient: almost the contrary, Cristiano busy with his baby twins, Georgina pregnant, season coming on with full force.

Hell, looking back, he isn't even sure why they started in the first place. The more he plays the past in his head, the more certain he is that it had been coming for a longer time. It didn't start with his dream, and Cristiano checking on him after the knock on the pitch wasn't anything that hadn't happened before. He remembers flashes of Cristiano's fingers on his sprained calf, hand pulling him up, eyes on him full of worry.

Cristiano's body, is he sure he never thought of feeling it, touching it, before the dream where Cris stood against him so vividly, his warmth and strength and his heaving breath, like his flesh was real?

 

Gareth traces it back to the previous summer, to the moment captured on so many cameras - for him it is a memory he only digs out of his brain in privacy.

 

The loss in the semi-final was not his fault, for sure. Wales fought but Portugal fought harder.

Gareth fought for every ball, he ran his lungs out and then more, all the time more desperately as minutes were ticking away from the game time clock. This one free kick. Go in. Please. No.

Cristiano's warm breath in his ear after the final whistle, his buzzing, tired brain barely absorbing his consolation.

Cristiano's praise for their amazing team. How Gareth loved them, every single man, every percent of their red Welsh blood.

 

It wasn't the first time he had lost to Cristiano, but it was the first time Cris had spoken to him after such occasion, held him.

"This was a good battle," Cristiano said, and it wasn't a hollow compliment. It was a warrior acknowledging the skill and spirit of his peer. "I would have rooted for you in the final."

Gareth didn't even have to say he would do the same. Cristiano knew it from his touch, it read loud and clear in the sincere nod of the Welshman's head before the winner's hand parted from his sweaty neck.

 

 


	7. Unexpected Transfer

 

Cristiano leaving will not be a shock for Gareth. He eases himself into the thought from little signs, mostly overheard discussions, some exchanges on his own, too. But there are not many of those: he does what a family man must, distances himself, stays friendly but formal.

He is too much of a coward for a clear-cut, explicit break-up. He never says that to Cristiano: _I’m leaving you._ _We won’t do that anymore. I can’t._

He doesn’t even stop talking to him – he only stops talking to him in Emma’s presence. But he gets vague in conversations that go personal, he avoids getting stuck with him alone. He makes excuses if Cris asks him to his room at Valdebebas or in away game hotels until he stops asking.

But he overhears things, they chat in training, on buses, on planes. He knows of the talks with Juventus.

When the transfer is announced after their victorius, spectacular season, he knows it has been coming. He will be able to nod a bittersweet but appreciative farewell, thanks to the best player he has ever had on his side.

Or in his bed.

Or shadowing him with all his potent glory.

What will be a shock comes from a blind spot, a direction he’s anticipating nothing from.

He has his issues with Zinedine Zidane. He has boiled with frustration on the bench, knowing he will never fully comprehend the reasons. He has loved Zizou when he is good to him, he has clenched his jaw and bowed his face down to hide the anger in his gaze when he’s subbed.

But leave? What will become of them now?

Summer will be beginning at its sunniest and clearest, but for Real Madrid Gareth can see nothing but thick, opaque fog, hiding all foreseeable future.

 


	8. Not Understanding the Language

It makes Gareth feel sidelined even when he isn’t. He hears the words. He catches their meaning. He can answer questions, he can even form coherent, understandable sentences.

But there’s always that half a step he is behind.

When they talk fast.

When they talk in their local childhood dialects.

When they refer to movies or TV shows he has never watched, songs he has never heard or learned to sing. When they twist words into puns he can’t join the laughter, or if he does, it’s always that half a step later, following the action, sometimes processing only halfway into it what the joke was he is already laughing about.

He knows he doesn’t come off as the wittiest even in English, but at least he can sometimes react verbally and vocally, be _funny_. In Spanish – he knows the language makes him look slower and stupider than he is.

It doesn’t matter in those times when his body is fast and smart and agile enough to do the talking for him. But it does hurt when he would need his words to make the argument his body is not making at the time, but _could_ make.

If his mouth could give it a chance.


	9. Homesick

“I’m fine!” Emma says. The digital phone connection is thin and hollow enough to make her mother believe her words.

What she wants to say is _I wanna come home_.

What she wants to say is _I want to have this one in the same hospital I had Alba_.

What she would give for a Welsh midwife. A Welsh doctor running the transducer probe on her belly, weather outside the window familiarly damp and chilly for the season.

“I’m glad,” her mother says. Emma doesn’t tell she’s two months pregnant, has a cheating footballer fiancee and misses home, misses desperately.


	10. New Teammate

Gareth doesn't make it to the ultrasound before the third trimester. But when he finally accompanies Emma to the doctor's office - she speaks reassuringly perfect English, and her accent is soft enough to bring only pleasant character to her words - it is a true game-chancer.

"You wanted to know the sex?"

Emma nods with twinkling eyes and Gareth takes the job of confirming it verbally. 

"Yes, please."

"Well it looks like your girls are going to get a little brother."

"It's a boy," Emma whispers and the smile in her voice is something Gareth can't remember having heard in ages, not since -

It transfixes him, like a lightning, a spear through his being, the need to keep it there.

 


	11. Jealousy

It's hard to return to the stands after she _knows_. Even the privacy of the safe, secluded box makes Emma feel exposed.

No amount of contouring, curling her hair into perfection, selecting a brand new flattering (but sufficiently tummy-hiding) outfit builds enough confidence to face the enemy.

He's so god-like in his cocky charm. Defying the boos or accepting the cheers of the crowd, taking his posture and strut and steps before a free kick, every little move she learned to admire alongside her boyfriend years and years ago.

How fooled she feels by it now.

 


	12. Unrequited Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love's the funeral of hearts  
> an ode for cruelty  
> when angels cry blood  
> on flowers of evil in bloom
> 
> The funeral of hearts  
> And a plea for mercy  
> When love is a gun  
> Separating me from you.
> 
> (The Funeral of Hearts/HIM, Ville Valo 2003)

 

Inhale. The familiar scent of skin, a trace of the shampoo from the dressing room shower, a sharp top note of freshly applied cologne, a drop may still be lingering on the neck if Cristiano looks close.

Exhale. A playful blow at the downy dark brown strands curling on the nape of Gareth’s neck, stepping into close proximity, body heat following the teasing gesture.

Cristiano adjusts the pace of his steps to Gareth’s, reaches his chin over his shoulder and smiles flirtatiously. “Follow my car?” he murmurs under his breath.

The suggestion has done the trick quite a few times, led to some glorious sexual adventures. Car sex in a secret hideout, once even a thrillingly risky blowjob in a small forest outside the town, forcing Gareth’s salivating huge mouth on his cock, the bark of a tree trunk scratching his back through his shirt, only enhancing the feeling of doing something extremely wild.

Sitting on that long probing tongue in the privacy of a rented cottage, spreading for that mouth for a totally shameless 69, twirling his tongue around the standing Welsh cock until it’s too deep to have room to lick anymore, giving it a good suck with hollowed cheeks, Gareth’s mouth on his ass, his hand jerking his cock. Coming on the pale lean chest right after swallowing his lover’s load, turning to straddle his waist and play with the slick cum on the sensitive, perky dark nipples, making Gareth gasp and moan again.

But now – a lopsided shrug, a distressed, apologetic grimace. “Sorry, we have –“ a vague handwave, not even bothering to come up with an excuse.

 

Cristiano’s rational mind says he should give up and focus his energy elsewhere.

Too bad its voice gets drowned under the bellowing screams of his pride and hormones. Rejection makes him only more stubborn in his pursuit.

He tries touches, from sly bro butt-slaps and neck-rubs to feather light, sensual, half-accidental brushes – to no avail. Text messages, bawdy series of emojis – short and blunt _sorry, can’t_ as a response, if any.

 

Can it be about the stupid quarrel they had weeks ago, nothing but a quick clash of two fractured egos? He never thought Gareth’s would be so fragile.

 

Gareth doesn’t tell him before Emma is showing too clearly to be ignored. It’s only days before Gio goes into labor.

Maybe it is finally so, this time. The end of something, the beginning of something new.

Cristiano scores, throwing his arms wide to accept recognition, cheers. Love.

Gareth looks away.

 

One string less tying him to the club, the city, the country.

A beginning of something new.

 

 _FIN_  

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> Feedback is fuel, be the 12th player.
> 
> I'm caixxa on tumblr.


End file.
